Climate change conspiracy

In one e-mail, the [Climate Research Unit of the University of East Anglia]’s director, Phil Jones, writes Pennsylvania State University’s Michael E. Mann and questions whether the work of academics that question the link between human activities and global warming deserve to make it into the prestigious IPCC report, which represents the global consensus view on climate science.

“I can’t see either of these papers being in the next IPCC report,” Jones writes. “Kevin and I will keep them out somehow — even if we have to redefine what the peer-review literature is!”

In another, Jones and Mann discuss how they can pressure an academic journal not to accept the work of climate skeptics with whom they disagree. “Perhaps we should encourage our colleagues in the climate research community to no longer submit to, or cite papers in, this journal,” Mann writes.

“I will be emailing the journal to tell them I’m having nothing more to do with it until they rid themselves of this troublesome editor,” Jones replies.

In other emails, Jones apparently asked colleagues including Mann, the inventor of the famous “hockey stick” graph featured in Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth, to delete messages related to the IPCC’s Fourth Assessment Report. Skeptics of that report had asked to review the raw data, and when Jones failed to provide it they announced their intent to request the data under the UK’s Freedom of Information laws.

Deleting those emails before they could be requested is disturbing evidence that the leading proponents of the theory of anthropogenic global warming are more interested in politics — control — than science.

This is a big deal. Phil Jones was a major contributor to the IPCC’s 3rd and 4th reports that essentially declared mankind guilty of dangerously overheating the Earth. This is what passes for science among true believers in AGW.

Will this revelation be enough to stop the US Senate from passing climate change legislation based on fraudulent data? As with global warming, I’m skeptical; big players like GE and Wal-Mart stand to make billions from selling us “green” tech that we apparently don’t need.